To boost its growth, Deinove, an SME WITH a workforce of 32, has just hired a manager with an international career background. A winning strategy!
Not many French start-ups in the biotechnologies sector can attract international heavyweights to lead the team. However, this managerial profile is crucial at the critical moment when a firm wants to turn a technological breakthrough into an industrial success. A French green chemistry nugget in a thriving global industry, Deinove is well aware of the strategic challenges. Listed on Alternext, the company today announced the arrival of its new managing director, Emmanuel Petiot, who matches the profile perfectly. This 40-year-old Franco-American manager just left his job as sales director at Novozymes North America, where he managed a 500 million dollar turnover.
 
 
Capacity to negotiate contracts with key accounts
Working in management positions for ten years with the Danish group, Novozymes, global leader in enzymes and micro-organisms, gave Emmanuel the chance to hone his expertise in industrial biotechnologies and his skills at negotiating partnerships with leading groups. He has been in this sector since he graduated from EDHEC and Centrale Paris, when he began his career at Dow Chemical and Air Liquide.
What made Emmanuel decide to divert his international career, almost from one day to the next, and move to Montpellier?
“Deinove management came to see me and persuaded me that, led by Jacques Biton, the company has developed a benchmark technological platform in terms of production standards in biofuels and synthetic chemistry based on biomass,” he told us. “Coming back to my country to position France at the leading edge of these new markets with Deinove is a real challenge.”
 
Deinove
Start date:  2006
General Manager:  Emmanuel Petiot
Capital raised:  14.7 million euros
Workforce:  32 people
Sector:  green chemistry

in Les Echos on 10.01.13